


Pointe of Contact

by cheshirecat101



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Ballet Dancer Stiles Stilinski, Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Creeper Peter, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Teacher-Student Relationship, Top Peter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:29:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshirecat101/pseuds/cheshirecat101
Summary: Stiles is desperate to follow in the footsteps of his mother; Claudia Stilinski, the greatest American ballet dancer of her time. And upholding the Stilinski legacy is entirely on his shoulders, but between the building tensions with his instructor, Peter Hale,  the costs of the program, and his own self-doubt, Stiles is in danger of losing it all. Or losing himself first.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely the fault of sunshineandtigers on tumblr and she's told me she regrets nothing, so I therefore regret nothing either. I have a secret love of writing ballet AUs, and Steter is a guilty pleasure, so enjoy. :)

It’d been like this for as long as he could remember. His first memories ran just like this; his mother teaching him how to plie, pirouette, developes and grande bot montes, correcting his positioning, his feet, his arms, every single part of him until she’d light up and clap her hands together, that smile worth the strain of holding whatever position she’d put him into. 

It didn’t get easier as he got older. She encouraged him into dance with gentle persuasion that he didn’t really need because he’d do anything for her even before she got sick, but somehow he’d always imagined that he’d hit this magical point where ballet became as easy and effortless for him as it always seemed to be for her. She moved with a grace that clumsy, awkward Stiles could never hope to recreate, only try to emulate, every movement fluid and even and just so goddamn _graceful_ for her. 

But ballet was never like that for him. It was blood and sweat and tears, bloodied bandages on his feet and crimson soaked pointe shoes, and he never did hit that magical point where it came as naturally as breathing. Even after she died and he continued on the path she’d made for him–”Claudia Stilinski, the greatest American ballet dancer of her time”–he had to work, fight for every single inch of progress gained out of devotion to something that honestly, he wasn’t suited for.

And there was the rub. Deep down–or not so deep down–he knew that he was never going to be as good as she was, never come even close. Ballet wasn’t his passion, it was his _obsession_. His one way to keep her constantly around, in his life by doing what she’d loved and loved to see him do. She’d always wanted him to follow in her footsteps–not that she hadn’t loved his father and believed his career was just as valid, but this was art and aesthetic would always mean more to his mother than practicality, even in death when her tombstone read “beauty will never be beholden to anyone”–and every bit of it had been done for that purpose. For her. For the sole reason that Stiles had been doing it for so long now that he wasn’t sure he could stop.

He cried, bitterly, when his father told him they couldn’t afford to send him to an academy without a scholarship. Despite the money both his parents had squirreled away for that very purpose, it was still a lot more than it had been in his mother’s day, and the only true ballet schools–according to Claudia–were European ones and that was so far away and did he really want to devote his life to this?

Sometimes, Stiles could swear that his father saw straight through him. When he asked that question, his eyes had bored straight through Stiles’s outer shell and into his soul, and Stiles, young, brash, and arrogant, still reeling from his mother’s death and with red-rimmed eyes from crying over not being able to go, had squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and said without a hint of tremble in his voice; “Yes. I’ll get a scholarship.”

And he did. He worked his ass off for it night and day, visiting every ballet teacher he’d ever had and asking for letters of recommendation, working on his audition with almost every waking second he had, turning himself steadily from a lanky, awkward boy into someone that could actually be called a dancer with a little help from puberty. He fought through jet lag and late nights and even earlier mornings to arrive at school after school after school, and in the end, it wasn’t even a question. He was going somewhere. He just didn’t know where yet. 

Letters began to pour in, and he ripped each open with the same anticipation, only to be let down again and again and again, screaming bloody murder every time he was rejected from another one. The French didn’t want him. The English didn’t. The Russians, certainly not. 

And in the end, it was the Americans who got him. 

***

“Aren’t you a little short for a dancer?”  


_Aren’t you a little creepy for an instructor?_ Stiles nearly shot back, but he was used to this by now. To Peter. And knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that getting him started on this this early into the practice would only end badly for both of them. It was only a few weeks into the new semester, and Peter had only been his teacher for that long, but the distaste for each other breeding between them was hard to deny and even harder to justify to anyone who asked why he ranted about how much he hated his new instructor. Even his father had questioned why he insulted him and then begrudgingly praised his technique in the same breath, and honestly Stiles didn’t have much of an answer beyond ‘he’s an asshole with a deadpan snark and likes to put his hands in uncomfortable places’. But that was every instructor at this godforsaken school. After all, “Touching is a part of learning, Stiles,” as Peter had rumbled so conspiratorially in his ear the first time his hand had landed on the inside of Stiles’s thigh and Stiles had nearly decked him.

He’d never had a problem with a teacher touching him before this year. Even after his mother died and he had to train with more traditional teachers than her, he’d been able to grit his teeth and bear it because it was all a part of the process. If a teacher didn’t touch you, how could they adjust your position, your technique? But something about Peter’s touch set him on edge, probably the same thing that had made him so wary about him the second he set foot in his studio. From day one Stiles had had a bad feeling about this partnership, but Peter was a well-known, well-respected instructor and Stiles was just the problem child with a brilliant dead mother and an ax to grind with the world. 

Okay. That was an understatement. The part about Peter, not the ax part. Peter was more than well-known; he was practically as famous as Claudia Stilinski had been, only he operated in the world of men’s ballet and she had been a woman. Their gender was quite literally the only thing that separated their fame, that and a decade or so. Peter had been making his debut when Claudia had been retiring, and he’d been turning to teaching sometime around her death. Which was how he’d ended up here, luckily just at the same school that had accepted Stiles, though it’d been made clear to him that he’d gotten in by the skin of his teeth. And now, no matter how hard he worked, it seemed like he couldn’t keep up. 

He knew, all things considered, that he was lucky. 1) because he’d gotten into the school on mediocre talent in the first place, 2) because he’d managed to stay in despite failing at nearly everything he did and carrying the immense weight of his mother’s name around, and 3) because he was being given the opportunity to train under Peter. 

Because yes, Peter gave him the major creeps in a lot of ways. But he was also undeniably talented, and Stiles was simply desperately hoping that some of that talent rubbed off on him so he wouldn’t blow this year and have to drop out of the school entirely. 

Because that was unthinkable. After the money–the time–the–his mother–after everything, if he got kicked out of this school, what would the point have been? Dance was the only life he had now. And if someone stripped him of that–or if he did it himself, considering he usually failed on his own without any help–he would…he wasn’t sure. There wasn’t an answer to that question, just an open-ended ellipses where the end should have been. His life didn’t have a punctuation mark yet, and all that nonsense about not with a whimper but with a bang was all well and good, but the end of his time as a dancer would be a whimper from a dying teen. Or, rather, an already dead mother. 

“Beauty will never be beholden to anyone,” he murmured to himself, and took off his necklace, carefully clasping it again and putting it safely in his bag before he started to pull on his shoes, those lovely flexible flats that were like baby ballet shoes. Just a warm-up, Stiles. There was no need to worry about a warm-up.   


Only with Peter, there was. 

“What was that, Stilinski?” his instructor asked, and Stiles looked up, sorely tempted to make a smart comment. But he bit his tongue. 

“Nothing, sir,” he answered, and got up, adjusting his black tights as he made his way to the barre with the other boys. “Just talking to myself.”

Peter gave him a look that was somewhat appraising and somewhat…something else that Stiles couldn’t identify, but let him take his position, beginning to call out instructions as the other teens got in place. In the waiting period while Stiles waited for the warm-up to officially start, he took a look around the room, examining each face in turn and knowing that every single one of these kids had more talent than he did. He’d trained longer than some of them, and shorter than others, but that didn’t matter. He was a fraud. He was a boy masquerading as a ballerina, the wolf pretending to be Little Red’s Grandmother. He didn’t deserve to be here, and couldn’t quite fathom why he was. Why they’d let him in at all. Only, he did know, didn’t he?

_“We have to say, your application was…interesting. But what really caught our attention was your mother’s letter.”_  


Stiles’s heart had beat fast in his chest, making his blood twist through his veins sickly. He hadn’t realized there had been a letter from his mother. She’d been dead for a year, after all.

_“The way she wrote about your potential…so beautiful. So touching. And of course, the fact that you had private lessons with her…well. It’s an opportunity any boy would dream of having.”_  


He had dreamt about it. Multiple times a night sometimes, after she died. Hearkening back to their time together before she got sick and started to accuse him of being the reason for her illness. As if he was a parasite, draining the life out of her. And the talent. Because that was what Stiles did best. Drain talent. 

He swallowed thickly, bringing himself back down to earth as Peter finished the summary of their warm-up and began to clap out time, calling out instructions as he went, and just like that, Stiles’s mind was gone. Lost in intense focus on his movements, every tiny little detail from the sweeps of his arms to the position of his fingers to the point of his toes. He did better like this, the one way that he was like a true dancer–dance was how he expressed his emotions, and it was also how he focused himself. Balanced. Took care of, in a perverse way. He threw everything he had into dance, despite how that could hurt sometimes, and it was starting to show. At seventeen his knees were already going, his back was in danger, and he took as many joint supplements as his dad could send him. All because if he didn’t, he would lose his mind. 

The warm-up moved smoothly from barre work into centre work, and the boys took turns in two groups. He stood by one side of the room, hands behind himself against the wall as he watched the first group go, continuing to do a mental comparison. Here was what they had, and there was what he lacked. It was a deadly combination of requirement and failure, and he wondered quite often how he’d managed to make it this far, even with his mother’s letter and reputation. He wasn’t cut out for this. And yet he’d never once entertained the thought of quitting. 

“Group two,” Peter drawled, and Stiles stepped into his spot on the floor, assuming his position. “Chest up, spine tall, shoulders back, arms out and Greenberg you’re still not getting it, right in front of you, right in front of you, right behind you, right behind–there you go. And one and two and three and four, and one and two…”  


Stiles didn’t need the count. One of the few other things that made him seem like a real dancer instead of the fraud he was. He could keep perfect time in his head, movements synchronized like a clockwork doll endlessly circling the same damn face again and again. Sometimes dance felt like that. Endless empty emotions and meticulous meretricious movements, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, all of that good stuff. Dance was a lot of focus, a lot of determination, and a lot of repetition. And Stiles only did so well with those things in small doses. 

“Point out, Stilinski, out,” Peter was saying, and Stiles’s brain came crashing back down to earth as he realized he’d lost the finer motions, but retained the count, moving mindlessly and with no form, though the movements themselves were technically correct. Okay, so maybe dance couldn’t always quite quiet his mind. But that didn’t mean he didn’t try. 

Only it was harder to try when Peter’s strong hands were guiding his legs into the proper position, and Stiles nearly snapped that he could do it himself when Peter saw his look and warned him off with one of his own. Stiles bit his lip, choking on his words (or was that his tongue?), and turned his leg out more, repeating the movement. 

“Better,” Peter said, and something in Stiles unfolded under the praise, even though he rolled his eyes as Peter turned his back, walking away again. It wasn’t his fault that he craved that approval because it was his metric to tell whether or not he was succeeding or failing at this whole enterprise, if he was going to be kicked out of this school. Peter hadn’t said a word about it, but they both knew that he was Stiles’s last chance to stay here. Which was why Stiles had gotten so much better at biting his tongue recently.   


But he was going to slip up someday, he could feel it. He always did. Always fucked up in some irreversible way that brought ruination and disgrace to everyone who cared about him as well. Was that his fault? Probably. Was he going to think about it? Not right now. Why? Because Peter was already eyeing him like he was going to publicly humiliate him in front of the class, something which Stiles would not put past him, and Stiles was gritting his teeth and focusing on his movements so Peter had nothing to call him out on. 

And Peter’s eyes passed over him, and Stiles felt like he could breathe again, chest moving until he redirected the breath through his shoulders, spreading out his breathing so it was barely visible. Until he’d nearly disappeared. 

***

Stiles was starting to think he was actually disappearing. 

That was the only explanation for it, right? Because why the fuck else would it be that he wasn’t on any of the cast lists for the school’s upcoming productions, even the senior class’s that Peter directed? He checked, rechecked, and triple checked the cast lists, even the younger productions on the offchance that there was a misprint somewhere. That he’d just been overlooked, and now...

No. Fuck. God. No. He hadn’t simply been overlooked. He just hadn’t been chosen at all. Something solid seemed to drive itself into his hollow chest as he walked away from the assignment board, clutching onto the straps of his backpack as he let it run over and over in his mind;

_I’m not good enough I’m not good enough I’m not good enough I’m not_ \--

Peter found him hyperventilating in a disused classroom, sitting with his back against the walls and his knees up as he rocked back and forth, trying desperately to comfort himself while long fingers twisted and tangled and tugged at his hair. He just kept muttering it to himself-- _I’m not good enough I’m not **good** enough I’m not good enough_ \--over and over, tears blurring his vision so much that, at first, he couldn’t see who it was that’d found him. 

“Stiles,” Peter said, and oh, Stiles hardly recognized his voice when it was that soft, “come on. Come with me.”  


It wasn’t like Stiles’s mental health issues were a secret in this place. He liked to think that the students didn’t remember anymore, didn’t care enough to recall him breaking down at multiple points during his years, the breakdowns getting more frequent but also less public as the years went by. Because after the first one there’d been talk of sending him home, but he’d rebelled so hard against it that the idea had quickly been abandoned. And rather than making him more honest about his struggles, it’d just made him better at hiding them from anyone who was in danger of taking this life away from him. 

Like Peter was. 


End file.
